1. Field of The Invention
The present invention relates generally to improvements in apparatus for producing blood smears on glass microscope slides for laboratory analyses, and more particularly to an outloader for transferring blood smear slides from an automatic blood smear slide maker to a compartmented multi-slide storage basket.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Automatic blood smear slide making apparatus generally perform a sequence of operations for creating blood smear slides suitable for laboratory analysis. A drop of a blood sample aspirated from a sealed container is smeared onto a labeled microscope specimen slide and transported along a drying path to an outloader where the dried slide is placed in a compartmented multi-slide storage basket.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,766,549 issued Jun. 16, 1998, entitled "Apparatus for Drying Blood Smear Slides", discloses such an apparatus in which wet blood smeared on one surface of the slide is transported along the drying path with the wet surface facing upward. The downwardly facing opposite surface is exposed to a warm air flow so that the heat conducted through the slide minimizes distortions in the blood cell morphology. As the dried slide leaves the drying path an outloader deposits it into a compartmented storage basket. Prior art outloaders usually comprise a vacuum gripper which operates to grasp a slide via a vacuum force applied to the slide surface opposite the smear. The gripper initially grasps the slide when the slide is horizontally oriented. Thereafter, the gripper tilts the slide by 90 degrees, thereby vertically orienting the slide for positioning in the storage basket. While such prior art outloaders serve the basic transfer need, they can be problematic if small slivers of glass or the like disrupt the vacuum seal between the gripper and the slide surface. Should this occur, the slide can dislodge from the gripper, fall and break. Further, in such outloader devices, there is no provision for precisely registering a lateral edge of the slide so that it will always be properly located with respect to the storage basket.